


Dieu et ma Droite

by miss_furniss



Category: Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: merged universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 14:02:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_furniss/pseuds/miss_furniss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hard times breed hard men, and (the real) John Harrison is a hard man.  A Sherlock / Star Trek crossover.  Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dieu et ma Droite

**Author's Note:**

> This mostly exists because I can't hear Cumberbatch say 'John' without thinking of _that_ John.
> 
> 'Dieu et mon Droit' is the motto of the British monarch; it translates as 'God and my Right.' The lesser used 'Dieu et ma Droite' translates as 'God and my Right Hand.'
> 
> Lastly: while the idea that there might've been a real John Harrison (and that he might've been played by Martin Freeman) occurred to me immediately, this story originally cast Benedict's Khan specifically as Khan Noonien Singh. I owe the concept of Khan as a title (and of Benedict's Khan as the lord of Northern Europe) entirely to Dandelion, by Fresne. Credit where credit is due.

 

 

        Hard times breed hard men, and John Harrison is a hard man. The _real_ John Harrison, that is, not his namesake, though Khan too is hard as a rodinium blade and just as apt to cut. Even asleep in the cryotube, skin diamond-dusted with a pale blue frost, John Harrison's jaw is set, expression watchful. Waiting.

        Khan lays one hand on the chilled surface of the pod. His own face remains carefully neutral. "How many remain?"

        "Seventy-two," Marcus answers. "You were the first _successful_ reanimation."

        "And the last."

        "Oh, they won't be harmed, don't worry. Your crew is in Starfleet custody now," he drawls, wearing a smug little grin that Khan wants very much to carve out of the man's face. "We take _very_ good care of our prisoners."

        Once upon a time, Khan too had taken quite good care of his prisoners. They'd called his brother Noonien Singh the best of the Augment despots, the most humane of the human gods; this Khan was known not as the most humane, but as the cleverest. Still, most of his prisoners had rotted quietly away, clean and well-fed and free to live out a long life-sentence. Some of them, however, Khan had given to John Harrison.

                                                                                                                             ******* **

_"What do you need to know?" John asked. He stood ramrod straight, hands folded behind his back. His voice was deceptively gentle, but his chin tipped up defiantly, blue eyes like chips of flint. All of Khan's crew had had a measure of medical training during the war, but John was more than just a field medic, and he had become so much more than just a doctor. John was the man to call when people needed talking. He knew how to hurt, and how to heal, and he had an uncanny knack for knowing just what would tip a tight-lipped prisoner over the edge. Khan was charismatic enough, persuasive enough, that he didn't often **need** to take advantage of such services, but... sometimes an egg was hard to crack. Sometimes he just liked watching John work._

_Khan leant forward in his chair. The very idea of_ **_having_ ** _an audience chamber was so old-fashioned as to be practically medieval, but Khan felt a kinship with the medieval conquerors that he did not share with the sniveling politicos whom he'd displaced. The idea of having named a second, too, was quite old-fashioned, but John had been created to serve him, to support him, as Khan had been created to lead. "I believe he has delivered supplies to the rebels in Cardiff. I need names, codes if he's got them."_

_"Am I to pop in and pay them a visit?" John smirked. "Been brushing up on my Cymraeg." Harrison did so miss getting his hands dirty, Khan thought, ever since their position had stabilized and they'd set up operations in the capital._

_Khan allowed himself a small, wry smile. "You know I need you here. We'll send The Woman. She'll take care of it quietly."_

_John nodded thoughtfully, then turned. "I'll get my tools."_

_"Wait, John-" Harrison turned back, and Khan continued. "I'd like to watch."_

_******* **_

        When Khan had woken, it'd been to naught but blackness and the thrum of blood in his ears. His own heartbeat sounded like the crashing of the tide, and he could hear the air rasp in his lungs. He drew breath, that first ragged, panicky gasp, and was immediately ashamed of how _biological_ it was. How human. How was he to know who it was that had awoken him? Might they not take the involuntary clutch of his hands on the sheets, the wild wide eyes and heaving breath as signs of weakness? When was he, _where_ was he, and whom was to be trusted?

        His eyes cleared and blackness became a smooth white bulkhead. He was in a medical bay but _not_ , he noted, one of _his_. Khan forced himself to breathe, long and slow through his nose; he forced the tension to bleed from his muscles until he relaxed back against the cot. It was a process of less than half a second. "Admiral?" a voice called, breathy with awe. "It worked, sir. He's awake."

_******* **_

_He'd awoken as he often did, these days: to the sharp tang of male sweat in his bed, not an unpleasant smell, entirely. John had tumbled unwashed into his bed again. It was becoming something of a habit. Khan rolled his head on the pillow, glancing sidelong at the other man. John slept clothed. Khan slept nearly naked. John's bedroom was on the other side of the palace, a national landmark that they'd razed and rebuilt as a defensible compound; the room was small and comfortable, like a little cave. Khan's room was big and airy, with picture windows that reflected back the sunrise. The glass burned pink and yellow now, diffusing the light to colour the thin skin around John's eyes. Despite Harrison's healing factor, that last campaign had aged him. His face was a network of lines: crow's feet, laugh lines, deep worry lines scored across his forehead. John stirred._

_"I see you've lost your way again," Khan rumbled. His tiger-deep voice was, if anything, even richer in the morning._

_"Terrible sense of direction. We'll have to see that's corrected in the new generation." John's hand snaked independently down beneath the covers. Khan felt it skate across his hip and snatched it, quick, in an iron grasp. Even half-asleep, Khan's reflexes had John on his belly in mere milliseconds, Harrison's arm twisted up behind his back._

_"You forget yourself."_

_"_ ** _You_ ** _forget," John mumbled into the pillow. "That I know your..." he struggled, testing the hold. "Weakness."_

_"Oh?" Khan fisted his hand in the back of John's hair, fighting for control of his head. "And what is that?" Suddenly John reached up to grab the hand that's in his hair; in an instant he had reversed the momentum of Khan's hold, flipping Khan ass over teakettle into the headboard. Khan heard his own back hit the board with a sickening crack- the board, not his back- and tumbled in a heap at the head of the bed. He was momentarily disoriented, but still rolled out of the way and off the bed before John could make a grab at him. Khan crouched on the floor, bouncing on the balls of his feet and spoiling for a fight, when John grinned back at him._

_"You want me to win," John said._

_"We'll just see about that," Khan said, and then they pounced._

         _In the end, it was unclear whom had emerged the victor. All that_ ** _was_** _clear- to Khan, John and the entirety of the Northern European Augment court- was that both men were very sore and very satisfied._

_******* **_

        John Harrison is one of the early Augments, decanted before their creators had perfected physical appearance as well as survivability. Khan wonders sometimes if such modification was necessary: beauty is so subjective, after all, it had seemed frivolous to code the genome for height, skin elasticity, etcetera. John Harrison is not beautiful. He is short for an Augment, 5'8", with sandy shorn hair and a wide, friendly mouth. He is not beautiful when he is sat still, but Khan has seen him on the battlefield. In battle, John is the eye of the storm and Khan is the hurricane. John moves with unhurried precision and faultless instinct, square face set in an expression of bloodless calm. Businesslike. He is a terror on the battlefield, not because he lusts for it but because he has the rare gift of sublimating his own savagery. It's there in every shot he fires, every rebel he puts down with his bare hands, but it is never evident upon his face. Khan sees it sometimes in the fine shiver of John's hands as the adrenaline dissipates, feels it in the urgency of John's mouth upon his own.

        Khan withdraws his hand from the chilled surface of the pod. Admiral Marcus is watching him and still smiling, the worm. "Friend of yours?"

        "Are you friends with all _your_ people?" Khan still wears the papery white medical pyjamas in which he had awoken. His long, tapered feet are bare on the floor, and he relishes the cold of the pebbled metal through his soles.

        "No. No, I am not. But I've read my history. You and your people were supposed to be.. what was it now?" Marcus' smile crinkles his weathered face unpleasantly. "That's right. Fraternal. Cosy enough that I'll bet you slept your way through half the crew."

        "Is that what they say about us?" Khan begins to move through the bay, wending his way around pod after pod after pod after pod. So many and yet... if this really is the last of them.... "Do you have any children, Admiral Marcus?"

        Marcus stiffens, almost imperceptibly. "I really don't think that's any of your business."

        "You do," Khan smiles. It is his predatory smile, his sadist smile, his inverted pyramid of a smile that promises pain. "Have they made you proud? It's so frustratingly _random_ , procreation. Maybe your squealing whelp got lucky. Maybe they've got daddy's brain and mummy's eyes, but... one never knows. And then," he continues, stroking his fingertips along each cryotube as he circles them, one after the other. "Just when you think you've seen them safely into adulthood, nature strikes again. A bomb's been planted in your precious babe's genetic code, something you could never have foreseen. Yes," he admits, "my people are my family." Marcus has the tactical advantage, there's no denying that. Khan's mind has already skipped several steps ahead, a stone across the water, and he sees a long, complicated subterfuge that is the way to victory. To freedom. Step one is _allowing_ Marcus his advantage. The admiral is arrogant; he will make some mistake if he believes Khan to be comfortably in thrall. "What differentiates my family and _yours_ , Admiral, is that mine was crafted to a purpose. Every man and woman in my care are themselves a work of _art_."

        It is a moment before Marcus elects to respond, and when he does his tone is clipped. Irritated. "I'm glad you feel that way. It'll make it that much easier to work with you. Understand that in this day and age, you are a war criminal, and there's no statute of limitations on war crimes. Now, I'm only going to make this offer once."

        "I'll hear it."

        "I'm going to offer you asylum. In exchange, your mind becomes the property of Starfleet." Marcus' blue eyes burn as he lowers his voice. The register is such that only Khan, with his extrahuman senses, might be allowed to hear. "There's something inside you that's been bred out of the human species. Something I _need_."

        "And if I should refuse? Or... wait, let me guess. I get killed."

        Marcus steps closer, leaning toward Khan across a cryotube. In his peripheral vision, Khan can see several Starfleet security personnel bristling with phasers raised. "If you refuse to atone for your- if you don't mind my saying- _innumerable_ crimes? I'll have your people killed. One by one, as they sleep. You'll watch me do it, and then I'll have you put away for the remainder of your... well, how long _can_ you live?"

        "I don't know."

        "I'm prepared to find out."

        Khan pauses a moment. He is imagining what it will feel like to press Marcus' skull between his palms, the grinding crunch of bone reverberating up his arm, the meaty slide of muscles tearing loose and, most deliciously, the look of horrified incomprehension on this _insect's_ idiot face. Khan's own face reflects none of this. Instead, he answers simply. "What do you need?"

 

        When he is ordered to create an alias, Khan adopts John Harrison's name. It is done not without forethought, because nothing Khan does is ever without forethought. His mental acuity is such that 'forethought' requires only a fraction of a second, after all. For years, Khan disappears into John Harrison. His every address from every Starfleet officer serves only to remind him why it is that he suffers the impudence of this inferior breed. Every utterance of his new name carves deeper the furrows that wound his pitch-black pride.

                                                                                                                                ******* **

_"To retreat is not to be defeated," Khan hissed. He felt Harrison's arm jerk in his grasp, but the man made no real effort to pull away. "We will sleep until they are like us, or else until they have forgotten us and their empires hang ripe as fruit upon the tree."_

   _"_ ** _Someone_** _needs to stay behind," John insisted, his face creased in a paroxysm of indignant rage. "It should be me. Someone needs to see that you- that all of you- are kept safe."_

_Khan smiled. It was a rare smile. A true smile, and few men had ever seen it. "Don't be ridiculous. It's a triple-tiered security system; these animals won't develop its like for another three-hundred years. Come now, John," he said, leaning toward his small, brutal attack-dog of a friend. "I am lost without my second."_


End file.
